ntin' a parlour ornament, I might shy some at Swifty's style of
beauty; but showin' bilious brokers how to handle the medicine ball is
a job that don't call for an exchange of photographs. He may have an
outline that looks like a map of a stone quarry, and perhaps his ways
are a little on the fritz, but Swifty's got good points that I couldn't
find bunched again if I was to hunt through a crowd. So, when I find
him worryin' over the set of his back hair, I gets interested.

"What's the coiffure for, anyway?" says I. "Goin' to see the girl, eh?"

Course, that was a josh. You can't look at Swifty and try to think of
him doin' the Romeo act without grinnin'.

"Ahr, chee!" says he.

Now, I've sprung that same jolly on him a good many times; but I never
see him work up a colour over it before. Still, the idea of him
gettin' kittenish was too much of a strain on the mind for me to follow
up.

It was the same about his breakin' into song. He'd never done that,
either, until one mornin' I hears a noise comin' from the back room
that sounds like some one blowin' on a bottle. I steps over to the
door easy, and hanged if I didn't make out that it was Swifty takin' a
crack at something that might be, "Oh, how I love my Lulu!"

"You must," says I, "if it makes you feel as bad as all that. Does
Lulu know it?"

"Ahr, chee!" says he.

Ever hear Swifty shoot that over his shoulder without turnin' his head?
Talk about your schools of expression! None of 'em could teach anyone
to put as much into two words as Swifty does into them. They're a
whole vocabulary, the way he uses 'em.

"Was you tryin' to sing," says I, "or just givin' an imitation of a
steamboat siren on a foggy night?"

But all I could get out of Swifty was another "Ahr, chee!" He was too
happy and satisfied to join in any debate, and inside of ten minutes
he's at it again; so I lets him spiel away.

"Well," thinks I, "I'm glad my joy don't have any such effect on me as
that. I s'pose I can stand it, if he can."

It wa'n't more'n two nights later that I gets another shock. I was
feelin' a little nervous, to begin with, for I'd billed myself to do a
stunt I don't often tackle. It was nothin' else than pilotin' a fluff
delegation to some art studio doin's. Sounds like a Percy job, don't
it? But it was somethin' put up to me in a way I couldn't dodge.

Maybe you remember me tellin' you awhile back about Cornelia Ann
Belter? She was the Minnekeega